Witches vs Winthrops

A witch with her familiars

Seventeenth-century folk believed strongly in divine forces beyond their understanding. Though we now understand earthquakes, lightning, hurricanes, and birth defects to be natural occurrences, those phenomena were thought to be created – and aimed at humans – by both God and Satan. Witchcraft was another force believed to be very real, especially by New England’s Puritans.

The first accusation of witchcraft in New England occurred in 1638, eight years after the settlement of Massachusetts. Several months before April 4, 1638, Mary Dyer of Boston bore a deformed child. The stillborn infant was secretly buried, but when word leaked out, it was exhumed. Governor John Winthrop recorded the investigation of this ‘supernatural’ birth in his journal [All of Winthrop’s accounts are edited here]:

Midwives

The wife of one William Dyer had been delivered of child some few months before, October 17, and the child buried, (being stillborn,) and viewed by none but Mrs. Hutchinson and the midwife, one Hawkins's wife … The midwife, after this discovery, went out of the jurisdiction; and indeed it was time for her to be gone, for it was known that she used to give young women oil of mandrakes and other stuff to cause conception; and she grew into great suspicion to be a witch, for it was credibly reported, that, when she gave any medicines, she would tell the patient if she did believe, [Hawkins] could help her.

This was the first suspicion of witchcraft recorded in New England. Jane Hawkins sensibly fled to Portsmouth, Rhode Island. If there was ever an accusation of witchcraft within Rhode Island, it was not given enough credence to enter the colonial record.  Rhode Island’s Puritan neighbors could not say the same.

MA governor John Winthrop

In summer 1640, Winthrop mused about a second woman skilled in midwifery. Anne Hutchinson once dwelt in Boston, but when she began interpreting Scripture to a large party of followers she was purged, along with any adherents who would not recant. Much of Anne’s party settled Portsmouth, Rhode Island. Puritans suspected that Anne Hutchinson used witchcraft to sway others to her beliefs, and Winthrop’s voiced his thoughts in his journal:

Mr. Collins, a young scholar full of zeal, and one Mr. Hales (a young man very well conceited of himself and censorious of others) went to Aquiday [Rhode Island], and so soon as Hales came acquainted with Mrs. Hutchinson, he became her disciple. These [influences], and others when [Hutchinson] dwelt in Boston, gave suspicion of witchcraft.

June 4, 1648: This time Winthrop, who still governed over Massachusetts, elaborated on a woman who was executed for witchcraft in his own colony: At this court one Margaret Jones of Charlestown was indicted and found guilty of witchcraft, and hanged for it. The evidence against her was:

 1. She was found to have such a malignant touch, as many men, women, and children whom she stroked or touched with any affection or displeasure were taken with deafness, or vomiting, or other violent pains or sickness.

 2. Her medicines being such things as were harmless, as aniseed, liquors, etc., yet had extraordinary violent effects.

3. She would tell such as would not make use of her medicine that they would never be healed, and accordingly their diseases and hurts continued, with relapse against the ordinary course, and beyond the apprehension of all physicians and surgeons.

 4. Some things which she foretold came to pass; other things she could tell of (as secret speeches, etc.) which she had no ordinary means to come to the knowledge of.

5. She had an apparent teat in her secret parts as fresh as if it had been newly sucked. After it had been seen upon a forced search it was withered, and another began on the opposite side.

6. In the prison there was seen in her arms, she sitting on the floor, and her clothes up, etc., a little child, which ran from her into another room, and the officer following it, it vanished. The like child was seen in two other places, and one maid that saw it fell sick and was cured by the said Margaret.

Her behavior at her trial was very intemperate, lying notoriously and railing upon the jury and witnesses, and in the like distemper she died. The same day and hour she was executed, there was a very great tempest at Connecticut, which blew down many trees, etc. 

Witch with familiar spirits

To 17^th century Puritans, Margaret Jones exhibited classic signs of a witch: a familiar spirit by which she communicated with Satan, a witch’s teat created by suckling the devil (probably a skin tag resulting from childbirth), supernatural knowledge and skill in medicine, and the ability to sicken and kill merely by touching.

However, after the hanging of Margaret Jones, there were no more executions in Massachusetts during John Winthrop’s life. He was a keen observer of natural – and supernatural – phenomena, but apparently not a strong believer in witchcraft. He did not possess the persecuting zeal of Governor John Endecott, who sent four Quakers to the gallows between 1659 and 1661, including Mary Dyer of Newport, Rhode Island. Herodias (Long) Gardner of Newport was one of dozens who stood at the whipping post for preaching or defending Quaker beliefs. Neither did Winthrop have the credulity of Governor Simon Bradstreet, who oversaw the Salem witchcraft hangings in 1692.

John Winthrop died in 1649. He apparently came to regret his earlier persecution of Anne Hutchinson and her followers, Anabaptists, and other free thinkers. It was reported that Winthrop was asked to sign an order of banishment while on his deathbed. He refused, saying, “I have done too much of that work already.”

CT governor John Winthrop

In 1650, his son John Winthrop removed to the fledgling town of New London, Connecticut. In 1651 he became a magistrate in the Connecticut government, and on May 21, 1657 John Winthrop, Junior no longer because his father was dead, was elected Governor of Connecticut.

Before the notorious 1692 outbreak in Salem, Massachusetts, Connecticut was the hotbed of New England’s witchcraft. Not every convicted person on this list was executed, but those known or strongly suspected of having died are in red:

Young, Alice	1647	Hanged
Johnson, Mary	1648	Hanged
Bassett, Mrs.	1651	Hanged
Carrington, Joan	1651	Hanged
Carrington, John	1651	Hanged
Goodman, Elizabeth	1653, 1655	Convicted
Knapp, Goodwife	1654	Hanged
Gilbert, Lydia	1654	Hanged
Mary Staples	1654	Accused
Bailey, Mrs. Nicholas	1655	Convicted
Bailey, Nicholas	1655	Convicted
Meaker, William	1657	Convicted
Palmer, Katherine	1660, 1672	Accused
Jennings, Nicholas	1661	Tried, found not guilty
Jennings, Margaret	1661	Tried, found not guilty
Ayers, William	1662	Accused, fled
Ayers, Goodwife	1662	Accused, fled
Greensmith, Nathaniel Greensmith, Rebecca	1662-3 1662-3	Hanged Hanged
Barnes, Mary Mary Sanford	1662-3 1662-3	Hanged Hanged
Wakeley, James Sanford, Andrew	1662-3, 1665 1662-3	Accused, fled Tried, found not guilty
Seager, Elizabeth	1662-3, 1665	Convicted
Grant, Mrs. Peter	1662-3	Accused
Varleth, Judith	1662-2	Tried, found not guilty
Blackleach, John	1662-3	Accused
Blackleach, Elizabeth	1662-3	Accused

Connecticut’s Puritan magistrates and ministers fervently prosecuted alleged witches, and seven women were executed for witchcraft before 1657. In May of that year, John Winthrop became Connecticut’s governor. He was elected again in 1659, and remained governor until his death in 1676. Notice that in the list of witches, there were no hangings between Winthrop’s election and 1662.

However, from mid-1662 through much of 1663 there was a major witchcraft outbreak which resulted in four executions. It began when eight year-old Elizabeth Kelly died after several days of severe stomach pain. An autopsy determined that the girl died of ‘preternatural causes,’ and before her death, Betty Kelly repeatedly accused Goodwife Ayres of witching her to death. 

Witches' cauldron

The evidence against Goody Ayres is scant – she ate broth from a boiling kettle and shared it with Betty. When the girl fell ill many hours later, her parents no doubt questioned her closely about who was tormenting her. Betty told them that Goody Ayres was kneeling on her belly and pinching her. After Betty’s death, the blood pooled in her arms looked like bruises – evidence that Goody Ayres’ specter had indeed pinched Betty.

Soon another ‘possessed’ girl, Ann Cole, cried out on Elizabeth Seager, Goodwife Ayres, Rebecca and Nathaniel Greensmith, Mary Sanford, and others. William Ayres and his wife saved their lives by fleeing to Rhode Island. The Greensmiths, Mary Sanford, and Mary Barnes stayed in Hartford, were tried and convicted, then executed. Accused witches pointed fingers at their neighbors, and a score of people awaited their fates in jail. It seemed that there would be no end to the trials and executions.

Alchemist - Teniers

Walter Woodward, Connecticut state historian, notes that Governor John Winthrop Jr. “drew on his own fascination with alchemy and magic to save, rather than condemn, the accused.” Winthrop was a physician and an alchemist. Alchemy is the study of chemistry and minerals, with an eye to magically transform base metals to another element – gold. Some alchemists were accused of witchcraft, but Winthrop was fascinated by the notion. He was no magician or witch, and he used that knowledge to block trials and overturn convictions.

So, what happened to Governor Winthrop’s benign influence during the 1662 outbreak? John Winthrop had gone to England in 1661 in search of a royal charter for Connecticut. Though he was elected in absentia, Winthrop did not return until 1663, after four people had already been executed. After Winthrop’s return, the remaining trials were quickly concluded and convictions dismissed.

The 1662 Hartford witchcraft outbreak is of particular interest to me because Herodias (Long) Gardner, my favorite obsession, has a Connecticut witch connection. Herod’s son George was called to court in October, 1662 to answer for reproaching Rhode Island’s Governor Benedict Arnold a few months earlier. George was only fourteen, and was found not guilty, no doubt after apologizing for his rash words.

John Smith was not so lucky. For the same offense, the Rhode Islander had to pay a bond of £20 to ensure his future good behavior, and to nail up an apology on the jail house door. At Smith’s trial, it was revealed that he’d accused governor Arnold of issuing a “warrant to apprehend the wife of William Ayres who was sent after from Conneticott for breaking prison, & that having given out his warrant did send private notice to sayd Smith’s house that the woman might be convayed away so to escape the said warrant.”  I surmise that Governor Arnold did not believe in witchcraft either. While he was duty-bound to arrest a jail-breaker, it appears he warned the Ayreses so they could escape a spurious, and potentially lethal accusation.

Trial by Water

Goodwife Ayres (whose first name I cannot learn) is the same unfortunate woman accused of witching Betty Kelly to death in 1662. The Ayres couple may also have been subjected to the ‘swimming test.’ A letter written by Rev. John Whiting of Hartford to Rev. Cotton Mather of Boston, tells us that, “some had a mind to try whether the stories of witches not being able to sink under water, were true; accordingly a man and woman [accused by Ann Cole] had their hands and feet tied, and so were cast into the water, and they both swam after the manner of a buoy.’  Fortunately, that feeble evidence was not deemed legal means to convict the unhappy couple. 

However, Goody Ayres was jailed for trial in Betty Kelly’s death. A neighbor said he saw her dancing around a steaming cauldron with other witches. Another testified that Goody Ayres told her she had been courted by Satan in London. 

It looked grim for Goodwife Ayres until her husband William helped her escape from Hartford’s jail. The unhappy couple fled to Rhode Island, and with the help of Herodias Gardner and her family, disappeared from New England. I am featuring this incident in The Golden Shore, the sequel I am currently writing to Rebel Puritan and The Reputed Wife, my historical novels about Herodias Long.

Sources:

Witch-Hunting in Seventeenth-Century New England  David D. Hall  1991

The Witchcraft Delusion in Colonial Connecticut  John M. Taylor  1908

http://www.wethhist.org/articles-from-the-community/2012/06/connecticuts-witch-trials.html

http://www.progenealogists.com/colonialwitches.htm

http://www.countytimes.com/articles/2011/11/07/l_c_t_monthly/doc4eaaa6c3c1e38564081222.txt

http://www.americanancestors.org/uploadedFiles/American_Ancestors/Content/Blogs/eNews/TWG%20555_AAmarticle.html.pdf

http://www.cslib.org/archives/Finding_Aids/RG000_samuel_wyllys_papers.html

http://library.brown.edu/bamco/bamco.php?eadid=mswyllys

http://faculty.history.wisc.edu/sommerville/351/351-21.htm

http://www.samthomasbooks.com/history-midwifery/intro-midwifery/introduction.html

www.wikipedia.com